Sometimes you delete user from AD and it could cause a big headache 🙂

Well… No more. Windows server 2008 R2 Beta – which is by the way already publicly available has a new functional level for AD that allows you to activate so called Recycle Bin Feature…
In this demo you will se my AD server with a domain called demoadps.local on which I will enable this feature. As I mentioned before – functional level should be Windows server 2008 R2.

Watch the video

First of all you need to enable the feature by typing a Powershell cmdlet/command:

Enable-ADOptionalFeature ‘Recycle Bin Feature’ -Scope Forest -Target ‘domain.local‘

after that you can check for deleted items by typing:

Get-ADObject -SearchBase “CN=Deleted Objects,DC=domain,DC=local” -ldapFilter “(objectClass=*)” -includeDeletedObjects | FT ObjectGUID,Name -A

This will show you the deleted objects which you can restore by entering:

Restore-ADObject -Identity 6ff46162-15c2-4d42-8e15-2fcac5c8422e

** domain.local should be changed with your domain name
6ff46162-15c2-4d42-8e15-2fcac5c8422e should be changed with a ID that matches your deleted object…

To make it simplier I have recorded a video tutorial to do that…